I feel one should say "It is me" or "It is (own name)" or otherwise say "I am (calling/in here/the one/...)"
They should rename this trope "Grammar Cop" or "Grammar Police," since it trivializes the true evils represented by the word Nazi. Remember Godwin's Law.
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This has 400 wicks and 800 inbounds, and it's a term used elsewhere; I doubt it's going to be renamed.
That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.
I'd be willing to help go to the effort to convert everything over. Speaking as someone who lost family to the Nazis, I'm not especially comfortable with them being trivialized like this.
I'd have to agree that this needs changed. It's offensive as all hell. I'd accept something still derogatory, but I am not, have never been, and will never be a freaking *Nazi.*
How about "Grammar Fiend" instead? Still makes us seem like jerks, I think....
"Grammar Nazi" is a VERY widely used term, which just about everyone knows and understands. Grammar fiend/cop/police are not.
I feel like a grammar nazi myself by pointing this out, but spelling isn't grammar, it's orthography. Grammar is what makes a language what it is — the words (yes, vocabulary/lexicon is part of grammar) and the rules for pronouncing, forming, and putting them together. Orthography is how the language is represented in writing; you could use either the Hebrew or the Roman alphabe for Yiddish and the grammar wouldn't change. So using "your" when "you're" is correct isn't a grammatical error, it's an orthographical one, and someone who criticizes someone for making that mistake is an orthography nazi, not a grammar nazi.
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Just to add yet another level of pedantry, you're not being a grammar Nazi by pointing that out... you're being a semantics Nazi.
Edited by 86.30.54.132
Ah, but since semantics is part of grammar, I'm being a semantics Nazi is just the specific kind of grammar Nazi that I'm being.
In what borders on an example of the trope itself, I changed the example of "It is I" begin correct because that's arguable. I don't want to go into detail, but in "it is I," the weird use of "I" follows only from an archaic rule that's against the normal use of "I" and "me", whereas in "taller than I" it follows from the usual rules, so you don't have to invoke a rule that's no longer used to say it's "correct", but no-one still says that.
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A huge amount of grammar nazism comes from insisting on adherence to style-guide "rules" that nobody actually uses any more. Not ending sentences with prepositions, not splitting infinitives... these are Victorian peeves that are not reflective of how people actually communicate in English. Since there is no objective definition of "correct English" other than the way English speakers talk, insisting on such archaic "rules" is more wrong than it is right.
Which isn't to say there aren't different registers of English with different expectations. What would be grammar nazism in a casual conversation could be entirely valid stylistic criticism from a newspaper subeditor.
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Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Needs Help
, started by garyghi on Mar 7th 2020 at 5:16:01 AM
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